‘Riverdale’ Season 4 Trailer Released and Fans Are Wondering Where Is Jughead?

The trailer for Season 4 of Riverdale premiered on Wednesday, Sept. 11, and like always, it raises more questions than it answers.

Shared by E! News, the clip begins with a search party, led by FP Jones (Skeet Ulrich), heading through the woods, calling Jughead’s (Cole Sprouse) name. The searchers are shown once more at the end of the trailer, just before the scene cuts to someone, presumably Jughead, pushing from the inside of what appears to be a wooden box and yelling, “Let me out” and “Help.”

Jughead’s absence is also important to note because of the last scene of Season 3, which saw Archie (KJ Apa), Betty (Lili Reinhart) and Veronica (Camila Mendes) burning Jughead’s beanie during spring break in a flash-forward.

Elsewhere in the trailer, Jughead is fully accounted for, sharing several coupled-up scenes with Betty as well as Archie and Veronica, who appear to be back together. Because this is Riverdale, there is also plenty of suspicious-looking activity, including Betty getting hit over the head with a gun, Veronica getting involved in some sort of scandal and crime scene photos.

After the trailer was released, fans began wondering about Jughead’s absence on Twitter.

Their question likely won’t be answered for a few months, as showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told E! News that the season will build up to spring break and put the pieces of the flash-forward together as the episodes continue.

“I think some of the fun of season four and flashing to that is understanding and figuring out how we get to that point in the story,” he said. “So it’s not something that is immediately going to happen, but we’re going to start sort of seeing threads pulled in that direction. We’re going to see what leads up to it and then we’re going to see the fallout to that scene, and that’s sort of the general shape of season four.”

Before that mystery comes into play, the show will deal with the real-life death of Luke Perry, who played Archie’s dad, Fred Andrews, on the series. The season’s premiere episode will focus on Fred’s death, with Aguirre-Sacasa having explained that he wanted to give Perry a proper tribute after his passing in March.

“It’s almost going to be a stand-alone episode,” he told Entertainment Tonight in July. “It’s going to reveal the fate of Fred Andrews and it’s set on July 4th. It’s a really emotional episode; it’s a tear-jerker. We had the table read for it about [two weeks] ago and i’m not going to lie, we were all crying. But we think it, again, honors the memory of Luke [and] It honors the memory of Fred. They were both such amazing human beings that we wanted to really, really craft an emotional and deep tribute to him, which is what I hope this episode is.”

Riverdale returns to The CW on Wednesday, Oct. 9 at 8 p.m. ET.

Photo Credit: The CW